Please read my previous post on Winability before this one.
Winability is a regulator of continued playability. It is the driver of the game and it has been thus since caveman first played Spoof. But then along comes this new model that works by a hijack this key playability driver, Winability. In a freemium game, no matter how deep and complex and rich and narrated and aesthetic it is, the game’s winability has been hijacked, and the ransom is your time.
I have really enjoyed some Freemum games. Boom Beach. Crown Rush. Smart games. Deep in the strategies and complex enough to pique a good learning response. But then, because the fundamental winnability of the game is determined not by skills and smarts but by how much the player is prepared to wait.
Note the difference. It is not like spending time to learn the intricacies of a game. It is spending time directly so that you can progress in the game. Ponder that it is a profound difference within this small world.
Time is the greatest game parameter and the greatest life commodity. These games have built in them, at the base, the incentive to waste the player’s time.
I think it is mean to waste someones time on purpose. I think if a restaurant puts a thirty minute lag on their orders just to make them seem not processed then that is mean.
I can see no real distinction between this and freemium games.